Step1
Location:
Find a location that fits your needs. You never want to get a place too small for your operation or to big for your pockets. For every industry there will be different needs.
Here are some questions you can ask your self when choosing a location.
· How many people will be working here?
· How much product do I want to store at a time (Volume)
· How can I lay the property out so that I can use every inch of space?
· Does it matter if it is on a main street or can I get one of the main roads?
· Is the ceiling high important?
· Will I require an air-conditioned unit?
And the list can go on, but let me let you in on a good secret. Do you want to know how to determine the best location for your warehouse? The answer is simple, look at other warehouses and see how they store their items and how much space their occupying.
By doing this you are able to determine how much space you’ll need of you had that amount of product in that type of layout. Use Home Dept, BJ’S, and Wal-Mart as a guide they exemplify what good warehouse style layouts are.
Step2
Physical Storage:
The key to beating the competition in this are is to always think big, start small, then expand. Did you catch that? If not review that again.
· Always think big act as if you were going to receive 10,000 products two years from now.
· Start small; by deferring the cost of what you want till you start to approach that time when the 10,000 products order will come in.
· Be ready to Expand operations as you become more successful.
Example: For the past three weeks I have been designing the first warehouse system for a major document management company Integrated Outsourcing Solutions. One of the tasks was to order “Pallet Racks” so that they could store their documents. The first thing I did was a yellowpages.com search for all pallet rack vendors in the local area. See by ordering local you save a ton on Shipping & Freight cost. Another thing you can do is go to a local place that has the products you would like and ask them who their vendor for that item is. In this case we so happen to go with the recommendation, see the guy that referred us took away the legwork cause he researched and found the best!
Step3
Logistics:
This may honestly be the most difficult part through out the entire project. I was blessed to have worked for some of the top retail and postal service companies in America and I am going to share my knowledge with you. Don’t worry I will keep in mind our budget, without skimping out on the quality. Remember you want to get the greatest quality product at the lowest possible price, but don’t be cheap. If you become cheap and negotiate your way down to the last penny your customers or clients will do the same to you.
Lets look at using a bar-coding system. This can be done different ways I will tell you some of the options I encountered and let you judge which form best fits your needs.
The first and best option is to call a inventory system reseller like SystemId. They will basically tell you what type of system you will need from the barcode code printer to the scanner and they will recommend units for you, for FREE.
From there, have them send you a quote (always get a quote from any vendor, just ask) on the product you should get and take notes as they explain the type of equipment that will be best for you. Also Wasp has really great out of the box solutions for all types of needs and they have great education links on the site with friendly support.
What I did on my last project was order everything from Dell and tell them which exact items I wanted and they will get it to you at the lowest price. You first have to find a great sales person on there staff and open a corporate account with them. Trust me it will save you thousands in the long run.
Novice 
Comments
Tweek45 said
on 3/23/2008 Nice article,
I found it very informational
rate: 5/5